The Chatner

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Please, I Cannot Compile This Spreadsheet, For I Am A Smooth-Skinned Goatherd

www.thechatner.com

Please, I Cannot Compile This Spreadsheet, For I Am A Smooth-Skinned Goatherd

a modern Pastoral

Daniel Lavery
Apr 21, 2020
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Please, I Cannot Compile This Spreadsheet, For I Am A Smooth-Skinned Goatherd

www.thechatner.com

Make me a spreadsheet for work

  • I cannot do this thing…my cheeks are of such a flush from the Alpenglow

  • I have a red cotton shawl in which I keep my simple cheese, from my village

  • My beautiful village, which I love, up in the mountains

  • Please, my goats…

Coffee time at work

  • No coffee…let us kneel beside the coldest spring and drink as the goats do…the goats are my responsibility, given to me by the King

  • People gossip so, in Poschiavo…I prefer the company of the goats, and for this even the goose-boy Torvald laughs at me

  • The Queen’s beautiful daughter has been missing for many years…the princess’ horse was called Tachëbrun, and could speak

  • My goats have ascended to the highest peak in the Pitz Palu, my attitude towards nature is Humble

Now is a meeting

  • No…now is a small potato, baking in the ashes

  • All times are now to a goat

  • Im Dörfli

  • I must rub goats’ milk onto my tender skin, for my beauty

You are late!!

  • I have my slippers, my shawl-cheese, my tunic, my goat-staff…my flock...the hills for my goats to browse and sluice…the songs of the nightingale and the lark…

  • You are built to envious show!! Grudged at and grudging, lanternless tale-teller! I throw my pebbles at you, from my sling, with my noble arm, to gaze upon my noble arm!

  • My true master is Dionysus, whose wand drips with honey and whose grapes bring god-madness

  • I do not tend to pigs…such work is for the pig-boy, whose skin is washed with pigs’ milk and cannot compare in either lustre or brilliance to mine…

Here is an email for you to answer

  • My hair is fragrant with fennel and grape leaves

  • I must pipe a while, I must play on my pipes to the delight of my goats and their sisters the hill-dryads

  • the free mountain air has filled my face with beauty…many kings are desirous of my simple outdoor beauty

  • I sleep in a field of flax and carry a long iron fork, for toasting bread….the fir trees will protect me from your fits of email

  • the brown one with white spots I call Bränli

  • Begone, landlord…never again will I dwell at court

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Please, I Cannot Compile This Spreadsheet, For I Am A Smooth-Skinned Goatherd

www.thechatner.com
5 Comments
Lex
Apr 21, 2020Liked by Daniel Lavery

part of me wants to share this with my coworkers as well all toil away in our respective homes... but in my doing so I would confirm Too Much...

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Mara
Apr 21, 2020

Excuse me as I change into my simple linen dress and shawl to go for a meditative walk in the early morning mist. The landscape is barren, like my soul.

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